[Perfectlap]

The way I've looked at is if I sold the car as-is and skipped whatever repair was needed, I simply could not find a better car (both on appearance and performance) without having to spend more money. Certainly more than the cost of the repair itself.

But all in, repairs and upgrades, I've probably paid for the car twice over a decade plus of ownership. I bought the car with only 9K miles and I still get compliments on almost every single drive even now that it has 99k miles. Had the Boxster Spyder come out sooner I probably would have switched as that's the only Porsche I felt would really check all the boxes like this one does for me. And that includes all other Porsche models. Air-cooled would probably have been the smarter move as far as resale, but that's not really a car that I could have used day-in and day-out over a decade like this 986S.